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Henry Kissinger Interview with Der Spiegel

"Obama Is Like a Chess Player"

Der Spiegel - 07/06/2009

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, 86, discusses the painful lessons
of the Treaty of Versailles, idealism in politics and Obama's opportunity to
forge a peaceful American foreign policy.

SPIEGEL: Dr. Kissinger, 90 years ago, at the end of World War I, the Treaty of
Versailles was signed. Is that an event of the past only of interest to
historians or does it still shape contemporary politics?

HENRY KISSINGER: The treaty has a special meaning for today's generation of
politicians, because the map of Europe which emerged from the Treaty of
Versailles is, more or less, the map of Europe that exists today. None of the
drafters understood the implications of their actions, and that the world that
emerged out of the Treaty of Versailles was substantially contrary to the
intentions that produced it. Whoever wants to learn from past mistakes, needs to
understand what happened in Versailles.

SPIEGEL: The Treaty of Versailles was meant to end all wars. That was the goal
of President Woodrow Wilson when he came to Paris. As it turned out, only 20
years later Europe was plunged into an even more devastating world war. Why?

HENRY KISSINGER: Any international system must have two key elements for it to work.
One, it has to have a certain equilibrium of power that makes overthrowing the
system difficult and costly. Secondly, it has to have a sense of legitimacy.
That means that the majority of the states must believe that the settlement is
essentially just. Versailles failed on both grounds. The Versailles meetings
excluded the two largest continental powers: Germany and Russia. If one imagines
that an international system had to be preserved against a disaffected defector,
the possibility of achieving a balance of power within it was inherently weak.
Therefore, it lacked both equilibrium and a sense of legitimacy.

SPIEGEL: In Paris we saw the clash of two foreign policy principles: the
idealism embodied by Wilson who encountered a kind of realpolitik embodied by
the Europeans which was above all based on the law of the strongest. Can you
explain the failure of the American approach?

HENRY KISSINGER: The American view was that peace is the normal condition among
states. To ensure lasting peace, an international system must be organized on
the basis of domestic institutions everywhere, which reflect the will of the
people, and that will of the people is considered always to be against war.
Unfortunately, there is no historic evidence that this is true.

SPIEGEL: So in your view, peace is not the normal condition among states?

HENRY KISSINGER: The preconditions for a lasting peace are much more complex than most
people are aware of. It was not an historic truth but an assertion of the view
of a country composed of immigrants that had turned their backs on a continent
and had absorbed itself for 200 years in its domestic politics.

SPIEGEL: Would you say that America inadvertently caused a war while trying to
create peace?

HENRY KISSINGER: The basic cause of the war was Hitler. But insofar as the Versailles
system played a role, it is undeniable that American idealism at the Versailles
negotiations contributed to World War II. Wilson's call for the self-
determination of states had the practical effect of breaking up some of the
larger states of Europe, and that produced a dual difficulty. One, it turned out
to be technically difficult to separate these nationalities that had been mixed
together for centuries into national entities by the Wilsonian definition, and
secondly, it had the practical consequence of leaving Germany strategically
stronger than it was before the war.

HENRY KISSINGER: Territorial expansion and power are relative. Germany was smaller,
but more powerful. Before World War I, Germany faced three major countries on
its borders: Russia, France, and Britain. After Versailles, Germany faced a
collection of smaller states on its eastern borders, against each of which it
had a huge grievance but none of which was capable of resisting Germany alone,
and none of it probably was capable of resisting Germany even if assisted by
France.

So that from a geostrategic point of view, the Treaty of Versailles met neither
the aspirations of the major players nor the strategic possibility of defending
what had been created, unless Germany was kept permanently disarmed. It would
have been correct to include Germany in the international system but that
precisely what the victorious powers omitted to do by demilitarizing and
humiliating the country.

SPIEGEL: Despite the failure of Versailles, this Wilsonian idea is remarkably
prevalent. Is our affinity to the ideals of democracy perhaps naïve?

HENRY KISSINGER: The belief in democracy as a universal remedy regularly reappears in
American foreign policy. Its most recent appearance came with the so-called
neocons in the Bush administration. Actually, Obama is much closer to a
realistic policy on this issue than Bush was.

SPIEGEL: You see Obama as realpolitician?

HENRY KISSINGER: Let me say a word about realpolitik, just for clarification. I
regularly get accused of conducting realpolitik. I don't think I have ever used
that term. It is a way by which critics want to label me and say, "Watch him.
He's a German really. He doesn't have the American view of things."

SPIEGEL: Then it's a way to cast you as a cynic, isn't it?

HENRY KISSINGER: Cynics treat values as equivalent and instrumental. Statesmen base
practical decisions on moral convictions. It is always easy to divide the world
into idealists and power-oriented people. The idealists are presumed to be the
noble people, and the power-oriented people are the ones that cause all the
world's trouble. But I believe more suffering has been caused by prophets than
by statesmen. For me, a sensible definition of realpolitik is to say there are
objective circumstances without which foreign policy cannot be conducted. To try
to deal with the fate of nations without looking at the circumstances with which
they have to deal is escapism. The art of good foreign policy is to understand
and to take into consideration the values of a society, to realize them at the
outer limit of the possible.

SPIEGEL: What if values cannot be taken into consideration because they are
inhuman or too expansive?

HENRY KISSINGER: In that case, resistance is needed. In Iran, for example, you need to
ask the question of whether you have to have a regime change before you can
conceive a set of circumstances where each side maintaining its values comes to
some understanding.

SPIEGEL: And your answer?

HENRY KISSINGER: It is too early to say. Right now I have more questions than answers.
Will the Iranian people accept the verdict of the religious leaders? Will the
religious leaders be united? I don't know the answers, nor does anyone else.

SPIEGEL: You sound very skeptical.

HENRY KISSINGER: I see two possibilities. We will either come to an understanding with
Iran, or we will clash. As a democratic society we cannot justify the clash to
our own people unless we can show that we have made a serious effort to avoid
it. By that, I don't mean that we have to make every concession they demand, but
we are obligated to put forward ideas the American people can support.The
upheaval in Teheran must run its course before these possibilities can be
explored.

SPIEGEL: So you are calling for a kind of realistic idealism?

HENRY KISSINGER: Exactly. There is no realism without an element of idealism. The idea
of abstract power only exists for academics, not in real life.

SPIEGEL: Do you think it was helpful for Obama to deliver a speech to the
Islamic world in Cairo? Or has he created a lot of illusions about what politics
can deliver?

HENRY KISSINGER: Obama is like a chess player who is playing simultaneous chess and
has opened his game with an unusual opening. Now he's got to play his hand as he
plays his various counterparts. We haven't gotten beyond the opening game move
yet. I have no quarrel with the opening move.

SPIEGEL: But is what we have seen so far from him truly realpolitik?

HENRY KISSINGER: It is also too early to say that. If what he wants to do is convey to
the Islamic world that America has an open attitude to dialogue and is not
determined on physical confrontation as its only strategy, then it can play a
very useful role. If it were to be continued on the belief that every crisis can
be managed by a philosophical speech, then he will run into Wilsonian problems.

SPIEGEL: Obama did not only hold a speech. At the same time, he placed pressure
on Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank and to recognize an
independent Palestinian state.

HENRY KISSINGER: The outcome can only be a two-state solution, and there seems to be
substantial agreement on the borders of such a state. Now, how you bring that
about and what phases of negotiation, what issue you start with, that you cannot
deduce from one speech.

SPIEGEL: Do concepts like "good" and "evil" make sense in the context of foreign
policy?

HENRY KISSINGER: Yes, but generally in gradations. Rarely in absolutes. I think there
are kinds of evil that need to be condemned and destroyed, and one should not
apologize for that. But one should not use the existence of evil as an excuse
for those who think that they represent good to insist on an unlimited right to
impose their definition of their values.

SPIEGEL: What does the word "victory" mean to you? After World War I, there was
a victor and a victim, the Germans; and the Versailles Treaty was an effort to
contain the power that had lost. Do you think it's a smart idea to claim victory
over another country?

HENRY KISSINGER: The important thing after military victory is to deal with the
defeated nation in a generous way.

SPIEGEL: And with this you mean not to subdue the defeated nation?

HENRY KISSINGER: You can either weaken a defeated nation to a point where its
convictions no longer matter and you can impose anything you wish on it, or you
have to bring it back into the international system. From the point of view from
Versailles, the treaty was too lenient with respect to holding Germany down, and
it was too tough to bring Germany into the new system. So it failed on both
grounds.

SPIEGEL: What would a wise winner do?

HENRY KISSINGER: A wise victor will attempt to bring the defeated nation into the
international system. A wise negotiator will try to find a basis on which the
agreement will want to be maintained. When one reaches a point where neither of
these possibilities exist, then one has to go either to increase pressure or to
isolation of the adversary or maybe do both.

SPIEGEL: Were the Western countries wise in respect to their dealings with the
former Soviet Union after their implosion?

HENRY KISSINGER: There was too much triumphalism on the western side. There was too
much description of the Soviets as defeated in a Cold War and maybe a certain
amount of arrogance.

SPIEGEL: Not only towards Russia?

HENRY KISSINGER: In other situations as well.

SPIEGEL: What's the difference between the conflicts in Europe in the early 20th
century and the conflicts we are facing in today's world?

HENRY KISSINGER: In previous periods, the victor could promise itself some benefit.
Under the current circumstances,that no longer applies. A clash between China
and the United States, for example, would undermine both countries.

SPIEGEL: Would you go so far as to say what we are seeing is end of major wars?

HENRY KISSINGER: I believe that Obama has a unique chance to conduct a peaceful
American foreign policy. I do not see any conflicts between suchmajor countries,
China, Russia, India, and the U.S., which will justify a military solution.
Therefore, there is an opportunity for a diplomatic effort. Moreover, the
economic crisis does not permit countries to devote a historic percentage of
their resources to military conflict. I am structurally more optimistic than a
couple of years ago.

SPIEGEL: The situation in Iran doesn't make you fearful?

HENRY KISSINGER: Fear is not a good motivation for statesmanship. It could be that
some kind of at least local conflict will happen, but it does not have to
happen. Iran is a relatively weak and small country that has inherent limits to
its capabilities. The relationship of China with the rest of the world is a lot
more important in historic terms than the Iranian issues by themselves.